Universities in the Philadelphia area were on high alert today after a threat directed at them was posted on 4chan’s /r9k/ board. The anonymous threat (everything is anonymous on 4chan) deliberately called to mind the threat/warning posted on the same message board last week, the day before a gunman shot and killed eight students and one professor at Umpqua Community College in Oregon.
“The first of our kind has struck fear into the hearts of America,” the writer of the new threat declared.
His cries have been heard, even by the president. This is only the beginning. On October 5, 2015 at 1:00 PM CT, a fellow robot will take up arms against a university near Philadelphia. His cries will be heard, his victims will cower in fear, and the strength of the Union will decay a little more. …
Martyr yourself for the cause or support those who have the courage to do so. We have the chance to make the world a better place for betas everywhere.
The deadline passed without incident — as did the deadline for a similar threat directed at schools in Edinburgh. Scotland, posted shortly after the Oregon shootings — but not without shaking a lot of people up.
Now the most malevolent trolls on the /r9k/ board, knowing that they have the attention of the world, are rhapsodizing about the coming “beta rebellion,” gleefully mocking the victims of the Oregon shootings, and posting threats aimed at an assortment of schools around the world, from Texas to the Netherlands.
And so, alongside more traditional /r9k/ topics as “Post your waifu” and “DAILY REMINDER THAT ALL FEMALES ARE DECEIVING SUBHUMAN WHORES,” the board today is filled with simultaneously ridiculous and chilling messages like these:
4chan being what it is, other anons are posting ironic “threats” aimed at, among other places, the moon, Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, and Whoville — the latter a reference to a news reporter who mistook the board’s meme mascot, a frog called Pepe, for the Grinch.
In the wake of a mass shooting that left ten people dead, this is all a good deal less than hilarious. Yes, yes, 4chan apologists, I know that the anons writing the “real threats” are most likely shitposters, like the anons joking about shooting up the moon, in that they most likely have no intention of carrying out their threats.
But at the same time it’s clear they do intend to terrorize real people with their probably fake threats. As they know well, we have to take them seriously, given that a similar threat on the same message board only a few days ago was followed by an actual, real-world massacre.
This isn’t shitposting so much as it is terrorism, a form of terrorism enabled and in some ways encouraged by 4chan’s anonymous nature.
It’s also clear that the “beta uprising” the /r9k/ regulars are joking about — and designing flags for — isn’t altogether a joke to them either.
Aside from the picture of Hitler, there’s not much deliberate irony in this discussion. These are two people discussing the future of a would-be political movement, in the wake of an act of terrorism that may be tied to the message board they are posting on. One thinks the terror caused by the shootings in Oregon will lead people to take their “issues” seriously; the second sees to think that continued violence is the only answer.
I’m not seeing a joke here.
Lots of people have fictional or famous crushes, that’s not so bad. The creepy part is people who use “Waifu” tend to dehumanise them down to blow-up dolls.
@EJ
There’s a big difference between just crushing on someone and erotomania.
Infowar wrote about 4chan scam action “piss for equality”, pretending that many feminists took the bait when in reality all the “feminist” twitter accounts that were showed in the article were from 4channers themselves (they all have been created only recently and the tweets really show it all).
@ andre
Indeed, of course for it to be true erotomania (De clerembaut’s syndrome) the person with the infatuation has to believe it is in fact reciprocated and that the other party is communicating with them.
*tucks away teenage crushes on fictional characters*
YEAH, THAT’S REALLY CREEPY.
I mean, who DOES that?
*looks around, heart starts beating a bit too fast*
Right?
Right??
@Vanir, et al re: “shut down 4chan, prosexute the members”:
Eh, from what I know of the bulk of the site, I’d cry no tears if it suddenly vanished, but I’m not down for witch hunts.
Assumimg thry can be found, prosecute for terrorism those who are posting specific threats (or at least track them down and keep an eye on them*)?
Sure.
But “ARGLEBARLGLE GULAG TIME” isn’t cool.
We may be speaking across cultures here, though. I’m coming from an admittedly Hoorah-1st-Amendment stance.
—
* From what I understand, even the US Secret Service makes sure that someone who’s making threats against the President is actually potentially capable of carrying them out before prosecution’s even remotely on the table.
I refer to Jon Hamm as my boyfriend. I don’t actually think he and I are dating but I don’t think it’s creepy that I have a crush on him and jokingly tell people he’s my boyfriend.
Is that the mindset of people with waifus or….?
That’s why the United States does it outside of their borders. And the person only needs to be suspected of or accused of being a member of a terrorist group.
Please excuse the eleventy bilion rushing-on-my-phone-based typos.
[blockquote]Lots of people have fictional or famous crushes, that’s not so bad. The creepy part is people who use “Waifu” tend to dehumanise them down to blow-up dolls.[/blockquote]
I fully agree with that. It’s not so bad in itself (perhaps creepy on some, I can think of the youngest-looking one), but often the people doing that also make them complete stepford wives. It’s particulary jarring when I see that done on character I love because of their tormented psyche and humane reactions, like, say, Asuka from Evangelion.
On a somewhat similar note, I found that : https://twitter.com/cubewatermelon/status/650924632933974016
It’s certainly the worse case and creepiest case of dehumanizing a fictional character I can think of. Any women I would see with that expression and invitation would make me immediatly call the police, because she negatively look broken.
More Kevin Logan’s Sarkeesian Effect parody is up.
@marinerachel
For the most part yes that’s it. Some people take it too far but that fall under the whole Dark side of Anime culture and a lot of people precise that side of it to be everything.
And yeah I have fictional ceushes. Juvia from fairy tial has like the same personality towards romance I do 🙂
“Hey, people have noticed mass murderers commonly used chanboards to motivate themselves before acting! That means the police could monitor chanboards to locate the next mass murderer before it’s too late! Ok everybody, lets spam fake threats so the information is unusable and the police CAN’T prevent the next mass shooting!”
??? IMO
Dammit I hit enter too soon.
IMO, there’s nothing wrong with crushes at all, assuming that the person doing the crushing is fully aware that what they are enjoying is a fantasy. In the case of fictional people, it’s even more harmless because there isn’t really a way to take it to stalker levels (aside from actors, I suppose), or to victimize someone who doesn’t exist.
mockingbird: First off, fuck the first amendment. It needs a rewrite. It’s complete shit and only protects the speech of certain people (and corporations lol) as is. The constitution sucks unless you’re a member of one of the handful of groups it’s intended to benefit.
Secondly, yeah, very few 4channers are what could be called members, or trips. Most posters are like suburban white 13-year-olds who just found out about the Internet and who think being edgy mcedgerson is hilarious. Arresting all IPs that have shown up would be pretty dumb, especially when people are probably checking it out for the first time because of the recent news.
Honestly, I’d laugh my ass off if the r9k manbabies making the threats all got thrown in prison. That whole “my middle class life is hell and girls don’t like me because I’m a ‘beta’ (annoying creep)” bullshit wouldn’t fly. At all. There’s actually a video floating around on youtube of a 4channer who went to prison. It’s pretty funny.
Sorry, I just get intense schadenfreude from watching whiny, moneyed, straight white boys who act like their lives are “hell” while destroying others’ lives for funsies or whatever get theirs. They don’t know hell. I wish they did.
“What do you mean by exposed and shut down?”
Exactly that. It’s no different from investigating any other organized group engaged in criminal or semi-criminal activity. But they dragged their heels because it was dismissed as “stuff on the Internet”. Now the best evidence/connections are probably gone.
If you’re looking for specifics of how to investigate online creeps, sorry, not going to happen. No free protips to GG lurkers.
Ah, a timely example of English law.
Note she’s been charged under the relatively minor ‘malicious communication’ offence; albeit the racially aggravated version. So no need to show she was trying to incite anyone.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/06/london-woman-charged-over-alleged-killallwhitemen-tweet
So basically, people here are cool with the IDEA of Guantanamo bay and all its human rights violations as long as it’s against a different group than the one currently holed up there?
*some people
The above was pretty hypocritical of me, since I had my first crush on Éowyn daughter of Éomund (whom I will defend to this day as a stone badass, even for people who don’t identify as much with Faramir as I did.) Thank you for setting me right, M, AndrejaPejic, Mockingbird, marinerachel, Ohlmann, Robjec, Catalpa. My apologies.
Thinking about it, I think that crushes weird me out in general, but I’ll keep that to myself rather than making moral judgments about other people as a result.
@Josh:
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Hell no.
Honest answer: Cry some moar, gator. Your gotchas are weak sauce.
Good news! A 14-year-old boy in Arkansas was arrested for “first degree terrorist threatening” for a post he made on 4chan.
In all it’s context, the term ‘waifu’ was specifically when ever-so-creepy Kimura introduces his wife, as in ‘oh yeah, that’s my wife’. The joke was, of course, how does such a creep who became a high school teacher for the worst reason ever have such a kind and attractive wife? The main cast even asks her about this (and she’s like ‘eh, he’s just quirky’)
I’m torn on this one. Part of me gets this really uncomfortable vibe from the term ‘waifu’ (and more specifically its use) and part of me acknowledges that everyone has characters in movies, tv, anime or video games that they find attractive or imagine themselves with.
I think that for many of them, it goes beyond just crushes or fantasies and incorporates an element of possessiveness and control (imaginary, but still). Like it’s one thing to say “[Character] is so hot, I wish she were my girlfriend” but another to say “[Character] IS mine, she belongs to ME,” which is where the waifu thing tips into creepiness. As for how many of the guys posting about their waifus actually approach it this way (as opposed to garden-variety moon-eyed crushes and sex fantasies), well, I don’t know, but I think a degree of possessiveness is built-in to the idea…
Honestly, I really do feel for a lot of these guys – I know how it is to be a lonely, nerdy, bullied adolescent, and I know that it sucks. Our culture (assuming most of these guys are in the U.S.) stigmatizes depression and anxiety, stigmatizes social difficulty and awkwardness, stigmatizes loneliness, even; it’s hard to look towards the future and feel like there’ll never be anything there for you, really. William Styron wrote about depression that “It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul;” the movie “Side Effects” summed it up really well: depression is an inability to imagine the future (and yes, I’m assuming that a lot r9k types experience depression – that might not be true…). The thing is, instead of seeking compassion or kindness, or trying to find ways to change their society (maybe even – god forbid – working with feminist activists to challenge retrograde notions of masculinity), they embrace the most nihilistic bullshit. Dan Olson put it really well on his Twitter feed (@FoldableHuman) – I’m gonna quote it here rather than try and embed the tweets:
That said, I have to admit that some of the vitriol in this comment thread feels really wrongheaded to me. It’s way too easy to hate on nerds, on the socially-awkward, on the mentally ill…The real issue here isn’t white middle-class nerdiness, but rather a specific strain of hate that runs through places like 4chan (albeit not the entirety of 4chan). IMO.